She Voted for Trump. Then She Had Two Terrifying Miscarriages in Texas.

https://thebarbedwire.com/2024/10/09/she-voted-for-trump-then-she-had-two-terrifying-miscarriages-in-texas/

My sister Victoria was wrangling Elias, her then-2-year-old, into his costume on Halloween when the spots of blood in her underwear became worrisome. It was almost exactly two years ago, in 2022, and Elias had woken up from a nap excited about trick-or-treating. She’d gotten him into a shiny black firefighter hat, a yellow jacket with neon reflectors, kelly-green shoes, and a bright red hatchet — the color of the blood she could no longer ignore.

“I could feel it. That’s when I started to panic,” she told me last week. It was the first time we had spoken at length since 2018. “I was trying to hide it because it was Halloween, so the only thing I was thinking about was just making sure that I wasn’t spoiling the holiday for Elias.”

Our relationship was non-existent then, strained both by a traumatic childhood and the fractured ways we’d each coped. She was a busy toddler mom. I’d just been nominated for an Emmy. We were doing the best we could, but we butted heads. Meanwhile, people across the country were on edge, wondering what a midterm election would bring in the months after Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Now, with weeks to go before another Halloween — and another presidential election — she was explaining the terror-filled night she’d spent without me, when she faced the consequences of our state’s conservative agenda to outlaw abortion.

*snip*